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After House Speaker John Boehner's ridiculous statement that he wants to know "who is going to jail" over the recent scandal at the IRS -- and Nancy Pelosi's statement that we need a "clear definition of what a 501(c)(4) is -- MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell did his best to attempt to remind these politicians that there is no need to change existing law to fix this problem.

Ahead of this Friday's hearing, O'Donnell hopes that at least one of the members of Congress attending will ask the IRS why they decided to change the way they enforced the statute.

O’Donnell reminds politicians of the real IRS scandal:

As O’Donnell has been saying since Monday, the so-called IRS scandal is only the consequence of an older and more basic problem with the organization’s reading of the tax code–specifically, with its reading of Section 501(c)(4), which exempts social welfare groups from paying taxes.

The law defines such groups as “civic leagues or organizations not organized for profit but operated exclusively for the promotion of social welfare.” Since 1959, the IRS has been reading “exclusively” as “primarily.”

“By doing that they made IRS agents judges of political activity, investigators of political activity,” O’Donnell explained in the Rewrite Thursday. “IRS agents were then forced to evaluate just how political a given 501(c)(4) organization might be. And it is very clear that if the words “Tea Party” or the name of any political party at all appears in the title of your 501(c)(4) you absolutely do not qualify for 501(c)(4) status under the law.”

Some politicians, however, still don’t seem to understand the interplay between this law and how it’s enforced.

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House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-MI) on Sunday insisted that "no one is calling for military action in Syria" even though several lawmakers have called for a strike on the country's air defenses to create a no-fly zone.

During an interview on Fox News Sunday, host Chris Wallace asked Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA) if the United States should "stand by and watch the slaughter continue" without taking military action.

"I have met with [Department of Defense] officials, I have looked at what the options -- at what the way the civil war is going, at how fractured the opposition is, at how Al-Qaeda is a huge part of that opposition," Smith explained. "And it's not that I'm not sure. Right now, my position is, if we were to go in there and try to arm rebel groups, it would make the situation worse and there would be an enormous risk of us getting dragged into a war that we don't know the first thing about how it would come out."

"Nobody is calling for military action in Syria. No one," Rogers declared. "There are some great options... This is not something we should be arguing about."

In fact, Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Carl Levin (D-MI) suggested earlier this month that the U.S. should take out part of Syria's air defenses to create a no-fly zone.

"No one should think that the United States has to act alone, put boots on the ground, or destroy every Syrian air defense system to make a difference for the better in Syria," McCain explained. "We have more limited options at our disposal -- including limited military options -- that can make a positive impact on this crisis."

"We could use our precision strike capabilities to target Assad's aircraft and SCUD missile launchers on the ground without our pilots having to fly into the teeth of Syria's air defenses. Similar weapons could be used to selectively destroy artillery pieces and make Assad's forces think twice about remaining at their posts. We could also use Patriot missile batteries outside of Syria to help protect safe zones inside of Syria from Assad's aerial bombing and missile attacks."

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The Senate is broken so badly due to GOP obstruction that, as Ezra Klein pointed out in the segment above, they're less popular than the idea of the United States becoming a communist country, so hey, why fix anything? Right? It seems Grandpa McGrumpy is getting some help from a Democrat in the Senate to undermine Jeff Merkley's attempt at filibuster reform.

Dueling Filibuster Proposals Leave Reformers Scrambling:

The two leading champions of weakening the Senate filibuster on Friday criticized a bipartisan proposal that was unveiled in the afternoon with scaled-back reforms, and they pushed for their own package to make more sweeping changes to the rules.

Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) and Tom Udall (D-NM) promptly said the alternate proposal put forth by Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Carl Levin (D-MI) is too weak and does nothing to prevent senators from filibustering quietly and escaping public accountability for their obstruction — the centerpiece of the Merkley-Udall “talking filibuster” plan.

The McCain-Levin proposal, unveiled Friday after bipartisan negotiations, would make it easier for the majority leader to bypass motions to proceed and guarantee the minority two amendments on legislation regardless of relevancy, Steven S. Smith, an expert on Congress at Washington University in St. Louis, told TPM. It would also remove obstacles on motions to go to conference and approve minor presidential nominations.

Levin told reporters in the Capitol that the plan “will hopefully overcome the gridlock that has so permeated the U.S. Senate.” He added: “It is a bipartisan proposal.”

The Merkley-Udall proposal, by contrast, essentially eliminates the ability of senators to block debate on legislation and forces senators who want to prevent a vote on a bill to speak ceaselessly on the Senate floor until one side gives in. [...]

The pro-reform Fix The Senate Now Coalition also called on Reid to say “thanks, but no thanks” to the McCain-Levin plan.

“Instead of a serious reform effort, today’s offering is little more than a status quo, business as usual, recipe for continued Senate gridlock,” the organization said in a written statement. “[W]e hope the Senate Democratic caucus rejects today’s salvo outright.”

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President Barack Obama traveled to Michigan on Monday where he said a controversial anti-union "right to work" law passed by the Republican-controlled state Legislature last week really meant that workers had a "right to work for less money."

"What we shouldn't be doing is taking away your rights to bargain for better wages and working conditions," Obama told a crowd of supporters at a Daimler AG plant in Redford. "These so-called right to work laws, they don't have anything to do with economics, they have everything to do with politics."

"What they're really talking about is giving you the right to work for less money," he added. "America's not going to compete based on low skill, low wage, no workers rights. That's not our competitive advantage. There's always going to be some other country that can treat it's workers even worse."

"So, we've got to get passed this whole situation were we manufacture crises because of politics. That actually leads to less certainty, more conflict and we can't all focus on coming together to grow."

Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) and other Democratic lawmakers met with Gov. Rick Snyder (R) on Monday and encouraged him to veto the right to work legislation, although he had already vowed to sign it.

(h/t: Talking Points Memo)

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Current TV's Keith Olbermann spoke to Human Rights First's Raha Wala about the extremely dangerous threat to our civil liberties that the United States Senate is considering in the defense authorization bill where citizens of the United States could be held under military custody, all in the name of our so-called "war on terror."

Carl Levin's support of this bill astounds me quite frankly and who would have thought Dianne Feinstein of all people would turn out to be one of the Senators speaking out against the bill.

Here's more on Obama's veto threat -- Obama Threatens Veto of Defense Authorization Bill :

The debate over terrorism suspects on Thursday divided Democrats, with Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich., squaring off over the language with Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., Senate Intelligence Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill.

Democratic opponents of the provisions, who offered a series of amendments to strike or water down the language, appear to face an uphill effort to find the votes to amend the detainee language as almost all Republicans and most Armed Services Committee Democrats support it.

By moving ahead with the bill without a deal—the White House threatened to veto the bill earlier Thursday—Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., reduced the leverage and ability of opponents to force changes. Feinstein said she isn't confident the bill can be amended, saying only that she strongly opposes the provisions. She declined to comment on Reid’s decision to press ahead with the bill but several Democratic aides said his move caught Democratic opponents of the provision by surprise. The aides said Reid told Democrats he is eager to move ahead with the bill in the face of pressure from Republicans and his own desire to clear “must pass” bills that are ready for the floor.

The Obama administration threatened to veto the major defense authorization bill because of language paving the way for many terror suspects to be put under military custody, a sharp escalation of its battle with Congress over the future course of the war on terror.

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Looks like John McCain is continuing to have a bad day today. His poison pill that would have derailed the START Treaty failed in the Senate shortly after the repeal of DADT.

START treaty survives threat from McCain amendment on missile defense:

The Senate voted 37 to 59 on Saturday to reject an amendment to the preamble of the New START nuclear treaty that Democrats say would have gutted it.

The amendment sponsored by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) would have separated the issue of defensive missile interceptors from efforts to reduce American and Russian stockpiles of intercontinental offensive nuclear weapons.

The treaty’s preamble specifically links the issues by “recognizing the existence of the interrelationship between strategic offensive arms and strategic defensive arms” and goes on to state “This interrelationship will become more important as strategic nuclear arms are reduced.”

McCain argued that it is not appropriate to link the development of missile defenses to negotiations to reduce the nearly 25,000 offensive nuclear weapons possessed between Russia and the United States. [...]

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry (D-Mass.) said Republican concerns were overstated because the preamble does not have a binding effect on the signatories.

Kerry opposed McCain’s amendment because he said it would have forced the treaty and its preamble to be renegotiated, delaying Senate ratification for months.

“All of this argument that they have been going on for several days now is about language that has no binding impact on this treaty,” said Kerry.

Kerry said “if you change it, it requires this treaty to go back to the government, the Russian government, and then we don’t have this treaty, we don’t have any verification for whatever number of months follow.”

Good grief this man has some anger management problems.

From The Senate Democrats:

Senator Carl Levin attempted to set a time to bring up the Defense Authorization bill post-August recess today. Senator John McCain, however, had other plans. He objected to setting a time for floor debate for the bill, citing his displeasure with the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy being a part of the legislation.

Joe at Americablog has more:

And, he's wrong about hate crimes. There was no secrecy around it. In fact, there were two recent Senate votes amending hate crimes to the Defense Authorization bill. In 2007, the hate crimes amendment broke the filibuster by vote of 60 - 39 (McCain was absent.) In 2009, the hate crimes amendment broke the filibuster by a vote of 63 - 28. McCain was there. The debate lasted a couple hours, not weeks. Clearly, McCain is easily confused, especially when he's being homophobic.

This is just an early indicator of what the battle will be like in the Senate to pass the compromise DADT repeal bill. It's going to get ugly.

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Sen. Bernie Sanders said something we don't hear often enough on cable news shows while talking to Dylan Ratigan about the amendments being considered on the Senate floor today on financial reform.

Sanders: Are we a democracy or are we an oligarchy where the very powerful special interests exert enormous influence over our government.

..I think we're an oligarchy and I think it's getting worse and I think we need to rally the American people...

The middle class in this country is collapsing. Poverty is increasing and the gap between the very rich and everybody else is growing wider. And what's happening with the banks is one of the reasons that that is occurring, so this is not esoteric. This is our standard of living. This is the survival of the middle class.

This interview was before -- no big surprise -- some of those amendments started going down in flames. Shocker right? More good news for the banks all around.

Republicans derail Merkley proposal to regulate banks:

A furious Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., accused Republicans Tuesday of blocking debate on a closely watched amendment that would insulate customers from conflicts of interest and prohibit banks from making risky but highly lucrative trades that helped trigger the recession.

Merkley's outburst came after Republicans objected to what Democrats thought was a routine request for the Senate to consider -- and later vote on -- the amendment he co-sponsored with Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich. That pattern had been followed for two weeks.

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Huffington Post has this amusing exchange between Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) and Goldman Sachs executive Dan Sparks today.

Chairman Carl Levin, to the delight of the crowd, continually repeated a descriptive, colorful word typically left out of family newspapers that was used by a top Goldman executive to describe a deal it made for clients.

The security, named Timberwolf I, a collateralized debt obligation of other collateralized debt obligations that were based not on actual home mortgage bonds but instead on those bonds' movements, was referenced in a June 22, 2007, email from a Goldman senior executive, Tom Montag, to another, Dan Sparks. Sparks is testifying today before Levin's panel.

In his email, Montag remarked of the Timberwolf I deal, "[B]oy, that timeberwof [sic] was one shitty deal."

Levin used the word "shitty" 11 times -- eliciting multiple rounds of quiet giggles -- in questioning Dan Sparks, the former head of Goldman's mortgage department, about why Montag would describe it as "shitty," how long they had known it was "shitty," and whether they knew the deal was "shitty" when they peddled it to clients.

"Our clients' interests always come first," Goldman says on its website.

That security was rated less than three months prior to Montag's email. It lost 80 percent of its value within five months of issuance. Sparks and Montag have since left the firm.

Levin grew exasperated with Sparks' non-answers: "I don't think you want to answer."

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What the hell is David Gergen smoking? When asked about the upcoming hearing by Carl Levin's Senate Subcommittee on Investigations, David Gergen compares the Congressional hearing to a hanging. I've watched David Gergen who's been moving further and further to the right with a lot of his rhetoric ever since President Obama got elected and who has been showing himself to be just another rightie and not a centrist as CNN loves to portray him as, but this one really takes the cake for just being ignorant. Since when is the Congress doing oversight before any action by the Justice Department akin to a lynching? Shameless. Just shameless. David Gergen, you just jumped the shark here with being an apologist for these Wall Street masters of the universe that just about took our entire economy down. Unbelievable.

Transcript via CNN.

BLITZER: Let's get back to one of the big issues in this mid-term election year, anger over Wall Street's role in the economic crisis. Executives of Goldman Sachs will be in the hot seat on Capitol Hill tomorrow as they fight allegations of fraud. Our senior political analyst David Gergen is here. He's joining us now.

David, the court of public opinion versus the legal court. They've got two major agenda issues concerns Goldman Sachs right now.

DAVID GERGEN: Absolutely. And Goldman Sachs is going to be in effect put on trial in the court of public opinion tomorrow but then they go later on to defend themselves in front of the Securities and Exchange Commission in a formal courtroom proceeding. Their chances of losing the court of public opinion are much, much higher than in a legal court. What we have tomorrow in this hearing, it's supposed to be an investigation. It has all the signs of a hanging.

BLITZER: A hanging?

GERGEN: Yes. You can almost hear the gallows being built right now. What happens when you put these -- you put the CEO of a company up there, you put him in front of a bunch of other people. It all looks like they're guilty of something and then you hit them pretty hard. We're going to have a lot of sound bytes out tomorrow berating them.

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